Slider
Greg "Slider" Rasenick is a homeless man who murdered Alice Herrera, aka Mariana Wallace in Jane Doe #38. After aspiring journalist Rusty Beck identified Mariana, he began a story on Slider himself called The Other Side of the Coin posted on his video blog Identity, the same place he posted Mariana's story. Slider was eventually found guilty of multiple crimes including Mariana's murder and sentenced to death. Its suggested that he will exhaust his appeals and then spend the rest of his life on death row until execution. History Slider is a homeless man who eventually got involved in crime to survive on the street. He recruited homeless girls as his accomplices in several burglary heists. One of his associates going by the name Alice Herrera refused to help him rob a house where she was working and drowned her to keep her silent. He then proceeded to rob the place and gave some of the possessions to one of his previous accomplices, Justine Pittman and attempted to kill her when the police started to dig into the murder. He was eventually arrested for the murder and attempted murder with the DA seeking the death penalty after he refused a deal of life in prison. The DA initially planned to offer him twenty years to life, but changed her mind after he showed no remorse for his actions. Slider refused life in prison and is now on trial for the murder. Slider has recently started claiming that the police coached him in his interview (which Provenza did a little) and he told them what they wanted to hear while Justine was actually the killer. He has tried to get the confession thrown out three times and has failed and is working on a fourth try. Rusty Beck later visits him in prison to try to find clues towards Alice's real identity. After Rusty proves that he himself was once homeless and is not just another "middle-class white boy", Slider makes a deal with Rusty to tell him what he knows about Alice in exchange for Rusty spreading his side of the story. Slider turns out not to know much about Alice, but is able to provide Rusty with his first real clue: the bird Alice draws everywhere reminds her of her sister who she talked about a lot and Slider thinks might be the younger girl in the picture Alice had among her things. A week later however, Slider has somehow learned that Rusty is Sharon Raydor's adopted son and he and his lawyer start claiming Sharon sent Rusty to question him to circumvent the justice system. Sharon had no idea Rusty went to see him and is unhappy with his actions, however, Judge Grove decides that Rusty was just acting as a journalist and quashes the subpoena. He admonishes Rusty for his actions and tells him never to visit Slider again. Rusty gets the judge to let him post his interview with Slider on his Identity blog however. Rusty mentions on his blog in one post that Slider is expected to be found guilty for his crimes which is part of the reason the city is willing to dispose of Alice's body, since they don't need it as evidence against him. After identifying Alice, Rusty decides that his next Identity story, entitled The Other Side of the Coin will be on Slider himself. According to Rusty's first entry, Slider faces charges of grand theft, illegal possession of a firearm, illegal possession of a controlled substance, witness tampering, witness intimidation, fleeing the scene of a crime, evading arrest, attempted murder and murder in the first degree, committed during a robbery which is a special circumstance and allows the state to seek the death penalty in Slider's case. While offered a deal of life in prison without parole, Slider refused the deal and recanted his confession to Alice's murder and claimed that he confessed due to coercive police tactics. After getting the needed permission to run a story on Slider and interview him, Rusty visits Slider who tells him his lawyer didn't inform him of the interview and feels Rusty screwed him over last time. Rusty reveals that Slider's only visitors are his lawyer and Rusty himself and tells him of how his mother, while in jail for a year, had told him that any sort of distraction from her daily routine was worth it. Slider insists on being innocent until proven guilty and that the system screwed him over. Rusty considers giving up, but following advice from Andy Flynn, shows Slider the questions and realizes that Slider can't read. Rusty later suggests that this may be due to a learning disorder such as dyslexia. Unable to secure an interview before his Identity segment, Rusty goes over what he knows of Slider's history, revealing that Slider had been arrested at thirteen for breaking, entering and burglarizing a home. At the time, Slider was a minor living on the streets with no previous arrests and his public defender was able to get him released on parole in the care of a foster family. Slider got enrolled in the eighth grade where instead of learning to read and write, skills which he currently lacks, he bullied and younger students and stole teachers cell phones. Slider was caught and prosecuted again for this crime and was convicted and sent to juvenile detention. A search for his parents during the trial revealed that Slider witnessed his father murder his mother when he was six and then bounced between eight different foster homes when he was between the ages of seven and twelve before running away to Los Angeles. Rusty suggests that Slider's attorney wants to use his past to garner sympathy, but Rusty points out that Alice had a similar background. Rusty eventually manages to gain an interview with Slider who tells him that his first memory was being watched at a club his mother danced at by the other dancers who would dress him up as various things and even gave him a birthday party. When asked, Slider explains that his father wasn't part of his life and his father's family pretended Slider didn't exist. Slider only ever saw his father when the man wanted to sleep with his mother and never really interacted with him while his father drank a lot and came from a family who had a lot of money due to owning three restaurants while Slider and his mother didn't always have enough to eat. When asked by Rusty about his mother's murder, Slider explains that his mother found someone else and his father didn't like it and showed up waving a gun around. Slider was sent to call 911 and watched through the window as his mother ran into the backyard where his father shot her four times. After the murder, his father ran off and Slider was taken away by the police. His mother's boyfriend, Eric, took Slider's stuff and promised to look after it until he found a place for himself, but he never did and never saw his stuff again. As a result, he doesn't even have a picture of his mother. While Slider became a foster child after that, he tells Rusty he was never treated as a child but rather a problem that people were paid to make go away. Slider admits he doesn't actually remember most of that period of his life and tries not to think about it. Slider eventually ran away from his foster care situation and hitchhiked to Los Angeles, saying that while he was really young, that was a plus as he got more clothes, a suitcase and more money. Slider describes it as doing what he had to do despite being twelve at the time but made a big mistake as one of the people he was riding with was addicted to meth and got Slider hooked onto it as well. Slider was then dumped in Los Angeles by the man and was in trouble as he was now a drug addict and didn't know much about money at the time and it all went to getting more drugs. Slider tells Rusty that his lawyer, Bobby Monroe suggests that getting addicted to drugs that young messed with how well he grew up and now he's going to "have to live the hard way" if he wants to get better, but Slider says that being high made things easier. Slider explains that when he came down, he had to deal with the fact that nothing was getting better for him and not just physically so it was easier to just get high. While Slider ended up in juvenile detention, he still got high there. However, he states that he is now clean and intends to remain that way and thinks he looks and feels better now that he's clean. After examining his image in Rusty's laptop, Slider believes he's getting better and finally becoming the man he'd wanted to be. Following his interview, Slider, now going by Greg again, has Rusty visit him in prison to discuss the interview. Greg then asks if Rusty will be at the trial and when Rusty confirms it as he's covering Greg's story, Greg asks if he can wave at Rusty and expect Rusty to wave back. When Rusty agrees, Greg tells Rusty it means a lot to him that Rusty cares about him like that as he has no one else who will be at the trial for him. Rusty is left stunned by this news. Slider is put on trial for Mariana's murder with Justine, Mariana's brother Gus and Andy Flynn testifying against him. As promised, he waves at Rusty who does wave back. However, Rusty is caught in a moral dilemma when Gus is flown in for the trial as Gus will believe he is there for Mariana while Slider will believe Rusty is there for him and Rusty hasn't told Gus about his story on Slider. Rusty is left nervous about this, particularly due to Slider waving at him again, but Rusty is able to wave back unnoticed. Andy is able to testify about how easily Slider could've killed Mariana in a minute, the time Justine saw him holding her underwater and later states that Slider made a fool of himself on the stand. To everyone's shock, after only about a day of deliberation, the jury returns with the verdict after all the testimony is over. Slider is found guilty of all charges and the trial moves to sentencing, with Rusty earlier expressing doubt over whether or not the jury would be able to unanimously choose the death penalty for Slider despite being sure they'd convict him with Andy's testimony. Slider is left shocked by the verdict and his lawyer, Bobby Munroe, subpoenas Rusty to testify on Slider's behalf as his only friend on Earth about his childhood, inability to read and disconnected view of reality in hopes of making the jury see Slider as a person and spare his life. Rusty's friendship with Slider shocks and angers Gus who Rusty had been about to tell before Munroe interrupted them and Rusty has no choice but to testify on Slider's behalf at his sentencing hearing. At Slider's sentencing hearing, Doctor Joe testifies about Slider's mental state and the part that his addiction to drugs played in it. However, Doctor Joe states that he believes Slider made the choice to kill Mariana and feels he should get away with it because he has changed his life. Doctor Joe also points out Slider's lack of sympathy for Mariana or remorse for murdering her. Rusty testifies to Slider's past, including that he believes Slider has a learning disorder like dyslexia. However, while Rusty agrees that the system failed Slider, he also doesn't see it as an excuse for Mariana's murder, telling everyone that Rusty himself and Mariana both lived on the streets at fifteen like Slider did but neither turned to drugs or murder. When Bobby Munroe keeps referring to Slider as the victim, Rusty tells everyone that when he hears "the victim" mentioned in the case, he thinks of the victim as Mariana, not Slider. Slider eventually goes on the stand as well and says he's sorry for Mariana being dead and breaking into the house she worked at, but goes on to say he thought that the house's owner wouldn't have Mariana arrested as she was rich and had insurance. Slider tells everyone that he does think of Mariana in jail, but only because she's the reason he's there and he understands why her brother Gus is upset over her death. Knowing Slider is only hurting his own case with his testimony, Bobby Munroe stops questioning him, but DDA Hobbs asks Slider if he's sorry for killing Mariana. Slider shows no remorse for the murder, stating that he can't be sorry for something he didn't do and the police tricked him into believing he did it. The jury is then sent to determine Slider's fate while Rusty's testimony causes Gus to look into his story on Slider and finally understand the relationship between Slider and Rusty. The jury decides to sentence Slider to death and Judge Grove ultimately upholds the sentence. As he leaves the courtroom, Slider glares at Rusty who later has a nightmare where Slider accuses him of using both Slider and Gus for his own ends and then getting rid of them once he had no more use for them. In the nightmare, while Rusty insists he didn't do that to Gus, Slider insists he did it to him. He also accuses Rusty of being romantically interested in him which Rusty insists is not the case. On his final entry in The Other Side of the Coin, Rusty states that Slider will likely exhaust his appeals and then be executed for Mariana's murder. However, as the state hasn't executed anyone since 2006, Slider could spend twenty years on death row before execution. Known Victims *Alice Herrera (drowned in a pool; real name Mariana Wallce) *Justine Pittman (attempted to kill but only hit her shoulder) Appearances Major Crimes Season 3 *Jane Doe 38 Season 4 *Sorry I Missed You *Open Line *Blackout *Reality Check *The Jumping Off Point *Thick as Thieves *FindKaylaWeber *Penalty Phase Category:Characters Category:Major Crimes Category:MC Season 3 Category:Murderers Category:MC Season 4